Abba’s Child – The Book Review

Abba’s Child by Brennan Manning. I read this book in February and in all honesty it’s probably going to change my life.

I use the future tense because while it has given me a huge about to think about until I actually act on these thoughts nothing has really changed other than my awareness that something needs to.

The tag line for this book pretty much says it all “The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging”.

As a Christian I am told that I am a child of God. A beloved child of God, with whom he is well pleased. God wants an intimate relationship with me.

If you read that last passage and were able to nod and say yes yes I believe, accept and feel all those things then please email me and tell me how.

It exposes the imposter within us all. The imposter being the false self we create in order to get through life but which then mixes with our real selves until we don’t really know who we are.

This book is inexplicable in that every person who reads it will take something different away from it.

For me the part which hit me the most was this idea of running into the arms of the father. That my reaction to stress, panic, illness etc should be to allow myself to be safe in the embrace of God. And right now I don’t think that’s something I know how to do or am sure if I want to do.

As you can see by my rather battered copy I marked ALOT of pages to come back to. And maybe once I do the ‘come back to’ part things will be clearer. I’ll let you know.

Maybe you’ve read this post as a non-christian and have no interest in this book. That’s totally fine, I would ask that you have a look at yourself and think about how often you are 100% yourself and how often it’s the ‘imposter’ that you’ve felt you had to create to get through life. And then take a minute to try and accept the fact that you as you are enough. We don’t need more fake people in this world. We don’t need more people appearing perfect. We need real people standing up and doing their part and admitting when they find it hard.

If you’ve read this as a Christian (or non-Christian who’s interested) then I beg you, read this book. It might break you in two but it will also build you back up.